"puzzlebox deathtrap" is a perfect wording, and should be a whole new sub genre, with this adventure as a model
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Great scenario for a mothership module! Nicely packed and usable station!
A few favorite things:
- Awesome highlighter sketches and excellent map
- The room descriptive details really build the story for the players
- The risk of crystals spreading to the crew’s ship
“…with an unsettling hiss that goes on far too long, the airlocks open…” Great tone and honestly a solid submission all around.
Packed adventure with interacting systems and difficult choices that can spiral out of control, love it!
What I thought worked
- There's a full ship with a lot going on, feels like great value
- I love the rock-paper-scissors effect of fire, crystals that need to be frozen and hypothermia
- Clean style, very polished
What I think could be improved
- While the legend was useful, it lacked some icons
- Some of the icons next to the text boxes were more confusing than useful at times since they didn't correspond with their placement in the text I believe
- Although i like the crystals, i lacked a bit of info about how they spread and if there's a check, since they are harmless until touched. Maybe i missed it.
Cool Mothership module with gorgeous art that feels like The Thing by way of Among Us, but is really its own hell frozen over.
This looks good and this reads well! The horror comes from the eerieness of the setting, I’d say hold back on those androids and let them dig their own graves by making everyone warm and cozy.
I’m not familiar with the system. Would it be easy to track the constant cold effects?
Also: perhaps I read over it, but where is a hint on the deadly frequency? (And how would the Crew facilitate such sounds?)
This was a fun one! I love a good survival horror and the environmental hazard is unique and fun, it fits well in the pulpy sci-fi horror space too! The layout and general presentation are pretty clean. The font size is small, but about what I'd expect for a (presumably) US Letter sized trifold leaflet, and is readable for me at least.
The Map is solid and well labelled, my only real qualm is that the first three icons in the legend are slightly too similar at a glance: I understand the intention and the logic behind them, but at the scale of the map as given, they are slightly hard to read without zooming in or peering closely, some higher contrast icons would probably be easier to pick out and identify, but actually having icons is a good touch and works well!
I think some less verbose room keys would allow you to separate them a bit and give the interior pages a bit more breathing room. currently despite being separated by text frames they still feel slightly cramped. I think just some minor edits would make this easier to parse, but as is it is still great!
This one is highly polished and compelling, I'll definitely be running this one!
This is a tough one to review. I like so much of this, but the great 'UI' elements, design, and art are undone somewhat by the sizing and layout. It may be improved by making the columns wider, for more space between sections of text. The map icons (and map) are also a bit too small for my old eyes. Otherwise, excellent work!
It feels like a fun module to run! I find the layout/visual design a bit too busy overall but I think it would be rather easy to run and play.
I don't get too much of an Appendix N vibe through the module - but I do get a huge mothership vibe!
A freezing scary puzzlebox, trapped in icy space is darn scary!
And I loooove the art style!
Great concept and use of an environmental hazard that doesn't come up so often in Mothership. I've lost count of the number of modules with extreme heat or radiation, so cool (excuse the pun) to see extreme cold put to good use. Good design of space and lots of interactive things to mess with. Hews close to Mothership's tenets of presenting a problem with hard choices that isn't necessarily "solveable". The densely presented info and the wealth of icons was a little hard to read at times due to size and I presume the orange icons are hazards/threats? Using Gradient Descent's room/text and border colour coding might have been easier to follow than the small icons, but very innovative presentation nonetheless. Great work!
Great concept and use of an environmental hazard that doesn't come up so often in Mothership. I've lost count of the number of modules with extreme heat or radiation, so cool (excuse the pun) to see extreme cold put to good use. Good design of space and lots of interactive things to mess with. Hews close to Mothership's tenets of presenting a problem with hard choices that isn't necessarily "solveable". The densely presented info and the wealth of icons was a little hard to read at times due to size and I presume the orange icons are hazards/threats? Using Gradient Descent's room/text and border colour coding might have been easier to follow than the small icons, but very innovative presentation nonetheless. Great work!
I'm running this on my next Mothership session! The map key and overall design is incredibly GM friendly and looks slick as hell.
So rad! Scratches that survival horror itch in the best way. The setting design really keeps the tension at a constant high and not sure if I’ve seen body heat zombies before, but works so well here. Love it.





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